Storybench from Northeastern University's School of Journalism

Tutorials

Assembling a searchable interface of Boston police misconduct data

The public’s desire for transparency about police misconduct in Boston has never been greater, yet the city’s police department makes finding that information difficult. That’s why I built Boston Cop […]

January 28, 2022January 27, 2022 Matt Wolfinger How to

Finding Embedded Tweets in Online News with Python

Exploring climate data using the Python libraries Matplotlib and Pandas

Mapping toxic waste release sites using the Python library GeoPandas

How journalists use the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory to report on environmental justice

How to calculate a rolling average in R

Update: How to geocode a CSV of addresses in R

Behind the Scenes

Boston lacked a system for the public to keep tabs on police, so the Boston Globe built a public database

The killing of unarmed people of color at the hands of the police led to protests and calls for change last summer. As popular support for the Black Lives Matter […]

April 13, 2021April 14, 2021 Emma Plante Behind the scenes

How Stamen turned a photo archive into an interactive art experience

Storybench Founder Aleszu Bajak on the moral call of the pandemic and his return to daily data journalism

How Sean Evans made Hot Ones an Internet Sensation

How the Boston Globe encouraged readers to support restaurants through #ProjectTakeout

How the Wall Street Journal conducted a video investigation into the role of the Proud Boys at the Capitol

How Lazaro Gamio of the New York Times visualized the COVID-19 death toll

Insights

Covering TikTok’s algorithm: How one tech reporter demystified a TikTok trend

December 13, 2021December 13, 2021 Alison Booth Insights

ProPublica’s Emily Hopkins encourages students to consider careers in data journalism

How The Scope mapped their way to accessible 2021 Boston election coverage

Lauren Sandler on the ethics of human-interest reporting

Roundups

Visualizing Uncertainty in the Time of COVID-19: New York University’s Enrico Bertini on the role of uncertainty

December 14, 2021December 14, 2021 Lauren Thomas Roundups

Visualizing Uncertainty in the Time of COVID-19: The New York Times’ Josh Holder on leading with questions when demonstrating uncertainty

Visualizing Uncertainty in the Time of COVID-19: The Washington Post’s Chiqui Esteban on the Power of Words

Bike-friendly Boston: These five datasets let journalists track the city’s progress

Longform

Does better news coverage lead to greater voter engagement? The answer: It depends

Meaningful participation in civic life isn’t possible without access to high-quality news and information. Consider the most fundamental aspect of community engagement: voting in local elections. If prospective voters lack […]

October 13, 2021October 21, 2021 Dan Kennedy Longform

Reporters often cover traumatic events but discussions of mental health are rare in most newsrooms. That’s changing.

Journalism schools need to focus on data, local news, social media and business models. Here are some that are.

The future of machine learning in journalism

Journalists improve coverage of memes with careful reporting

How the Palm Beach Post unearthed an opioid conspiracy with roots in Florida

Social media and news: The dilemma of our time

What is Storybench?

Storybench takes an “under the hood” look at the latest in digital storytelling, from data visualization and investigative journalism to virtual reality and the digital humanities. In addition to in-depth features and interviews with industry practitioners, we offer hands-on tutorials that can be “downloaded” right into the newsroom or classroom.

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Best of Storybench

How the Wall Street Journal visualized 500+ conflicts of interest of the Trumps

Women on the 2020 campaign trail are being treated more negatively by the media

Getting started with data visualization in R using ggplot2

Understanding what makes a visualization memorable

Using French wine reviews to understand TF-IDF, a measure of how unique a word is to a document

Interviews

Pizza, Press & Politics is our weekly speaker series at Northeastern’s School of Journalism. Watch interviews with David Filipov, Mike Workman, Jenn Smith, Martha Durkee-Neuman, Susan Labandibar, John Ward, Marc Fortier, Carol Gregory, Ling-Mei Wong and Elana Gordon.

Collaborative, Open, Mobile

Over the last three years, Storybench has interviewed 72 data journalists, web developers, interactive graphics editors, and project managers from around the world to provide an “under the hood” look at the ingredients and best practices that go into today’s most compelling digital storytelling projects.

They boil down to three key areas of emphasis: 1) highly networked, team-based collaboration; 2) an ethos of open-source sharing, both within and between newsrooms; 3) and mobile-driven story presentation. Read our paper here.